Time for reconciliation then.

Let us see how Greenwald blames the president for this.

Lady's trigger happy. So if there are triggers, the PO is, I guess, decidedly state based. One state doesn't trigger the PO for the whole country, only for its state. If prices rise too fast in Maine, say, Maine residents get a PO. Which doesn't pre-enroll anyone, which can't bargain with pharma, which has no established network of providers, which has to make a profit for the first 10 years to repay its start-up capital, which isn't protected from adverse selection by a strong risk adjuster mechanism.

If it has a trigger, fuck it. Pass health insurance reform (guaranteed issue, end rescission, repeal McCarren-Ferguson) and dump the mandate and the public option. Introduce single payer (Bernie Sanders' S.703 or Conyers' HR 676) early next year.

Health insurers to America: Your money or your life.

SweetJeezus! Just where do these people get the idea that they can defy their own caucus on procedural votes? Why is Reid even entertaining such threats? They should understand that they are Democrats or they suffer the consequences. Period. They can vote their conscience on the issue when it gets to the floor. But they have NO standing to defy their caucus and threaten to sustain a filibuster launched against their leadership.

I somehow think LBJ would be serving up Rocky Mountain Oysters to his feckless colleagues today as a means of getting the point across. Reid and the others would do well to channel a little bit of LBJ and put these jackasses out on the limb and challenge them to defeat health care reform. Enough compromise. Call the vote.

To add to what I said above, this idiot has it so backwards it is almost stupefying how she became a Senator in the first place. Why she thinks denying choices other or not someone wants private insurance or a public plan is good policy, or even good politics is amazing. So she wants less choice for parts of the country, which will drive UP the death toll and the cost, because that is better policy? She thinks that telling voters they should have less options in health insurance is a good thing? Really?

It should be made very clear to her, that if there IS a trigger on the PO, there is no HCR and she will be responsible for more dead Americans every 2 months than 9/11.

But to be fair, she is not the only idiot whoring for media attention in COngress that actually floats (and often gets away with) this stupid argument. Why she (and all the other idiots spouting this insanity) are not called on it point blank, and made to try and argue there way out of denying voter more choices in their healthcare coverage options is a good thing, I'll never know.

Maybe the trigger can be constructed in the way that the moment the bill passes, the trigger clicks home (since unaffordable health care is already the norm)?

Aside from that, she should be respectfully removed from any and all senate assignments immediately after HCR goes through and be told she can have some of those assigments back, one at a time, by future support for all caucus procedural votes.

I know this ignores the New Senate bind that declares a warm body majority of 60 is not even enough if those warm bodies don't play by traditional rules (as she, Nelson and Lincoln do not). I begin to better appreciate what Max Baucus meant when he said that 65 votes would be required for real HCR to take place. It would require a 65 seat majority, another 4-5 loyalists, to negate the exaggerated influence of these disloyal oppportunist extortionists.

Nelson, who's threatening to not vote for cloture based on abortion (but who's problems would "magically" go away if the public option were gone) is secretly for this as well. So far that's three. That's Landrieu, Nelson and Lieberman. This is like I feared. If one is fillibustering openly (Lieberman) than that's cover for problem 3-5 others.

At least, she did not touch the Wyden amendment.

If health care fails, Welcome to the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party.

Can't Tim Kaine make this easy and just promise to give absolutely no DNC money for the reelection campaigns of Dems who vote against this bill???

Would good old boy Moon Landrieu be proud of his girl? She should be ashamed of herself. Lots of poor folks in Louisiana need health care.

She just said she will allow a vote to vote!

Uggghh! We've already compromised, and now we're being asked to compromise again. We need to contact our Progressive senators and teach them some negotiating skills. Bernie Sanders will not vote for a trigger. Feingold and Rockefeller may soon be in that contingency. If they made as much noise as the 3 conservative standard bearers, we would have a shot at a real compromise, and our only shot at an effective bill. Water it down any further and reform will worsen matters, resulting in a Democratic bloodbath for many elections to come.